Results for 'Spengler'

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  1. Longing, Dread and Care: Spengler’s Account of the Existential Structure of Human Experience.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2020 - Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 51 (1):71-87.
    In The Decline of the West Spengler puts forward a type of philosophical anthropology, an account of the structures of human experiential consciousness and a method of “physiognomic” analysis, which I argue has dimensions that can be understood as akin to existential phenomenology. Humanity, for Spengler, is witness to the creative flux of “Becoming” and constructs a world of phenomena bounded by death, underpinned by the two prime feelings of dread and longing and structured by the two forms (...)
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  2. Oswald Spengler and Martin Heidegger on Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2017 - Idealistic Studies 47 (1 & 2):1-22.
    This paper argues that Oswald Spengler has an innovative philosophical position on the nature and interrelation of mathematics and science. It further argues that his position in many ways parallels that of Martin Heidegger. Both held that an appreciation of the mathematical nature of contemporary science was critical to a proper appreciation of science, technology and modernity. Both also held that the fundamental feature of modern science is its mathematical nature, and that the mathematical operates as a projection that (...)
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  3. Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historic Cycles.R. G. Collingwood - 1927 - Antiquity 1:311-325.
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  4. Spengler Among the Philosophers.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2023 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 7 (1):VI-X.
    The introduction to the second of a two-part special issue on Oswald Spengler. This section explores his philosophical reception by his Weimar contemporaries and presents new analyses of the philosophical features of his thought.
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  5. Arguments with Fictional Philosophers: Spengler's Kant and the conceptual foundations of Spengler's early philosophy of history.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2023 - History of the Human Sciences 36 (3/4):242–259.
    Most commentators on Spengler's philosophy tend to focus on the details of his cyclical theory of world-history, according to which history should be understood in terms of the rise and fall of great cultures. I argue that Spengler's philosophy of history is itself an expression of his primary concern with philosophical analysis of the structures of human consciousness, and that an awareness of Spengler's account of the existential structures of subjective consciousness enables one to grasp the reasoning (...)
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  6. Timely Meditations?: Oswald Spengler’s Philosophy of History Reconsidered.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2018 - Prolegomena: Časopis Za Filozofiju 17 (2):137-154.
    This paper argues that the recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Oswald Spengler, particularly concerning its warnings of the imminent demise of Western Civilisation, is misplaced. Arguments concerning the accuracy of his predictions or cultural analysis have overlooked the necessity of evaluating the coherence of the philosophical system that Spengler used to generate and justify his speculative declarations. Such an evaluation indicates a number of apparent contradictions at the heart of Spengler’s historical model. The attempt (...)
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  7. Technology and the End of Western Civilisation: Spengler’s and Heidegger’s Histories of Life/Being.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2019 - Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology 19 (1):1-10.
    Spengler’s work is typically represented as speculative philosophy of history. However, I argue that there is good reason to consider much of his thought as preoccupied with existential and phenomenological questions about the nature and ends of human existence, rather than with history per se. In this paper I consider Spengler’s work in comparison with Heidegger’s history of Being and analysis of technological modernity. I argue that Spengler’s considerable proximity to much of Heidegger’s thought compels us to (...)
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  8. Wittgenstein und Spengler.Rafael Ferber - 1991 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 73 (2):188-207.
    In his Vermischte Bemerkungen 43, Wittgenstein notices that he was also influenced by Oswald Spengler. The paper deals with the question of in which way Spengler influenced Wittgenstein’s late works and if it really was influence or only a coincidence of ideas. It is put forward that Spengler’s rather unknown philosophy of language influenced Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, especially the concepts of family resemblance, antiessentialism, and language-game (Sprachspiel). A picture of the famous Neapolitan gesture of “negation” which (...)
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  9. Morpho-logical Investigations: Wittgenstein and Spengler.A. Losev - 2012 - Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy 4.
    The influence of Spengler on Wittgenstein's philosophical development is considered. The point of interest is in a significant methodological restructuring which it appears to have produced. After an initial over-enthusiastic reception, Wittgenstein is seen to object on some points which he attempted to emend in his own philosophy. Spengler's name disappeared inreworked manuscripts but traces persist in the Philosophical Investigations and an important section (§89-133) is found to be connected with it.
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  10.  79
    Decline or Renewal: Husserl’s Confrontation with Spengler and the Possibility of Soteriological Teleology.Benjamin Ogden - 2024 - The Apricot 4:22-43.
    In the Weimar period, Oswald Spengler and Edmund Husserl each published distinct philosophies of history which can be construed as teleological: The Decline of The West (1918) and The Crisis of European Sciences (1936) respectively. These texts arose out of a common historical-cultural climate in Germany and share common diagnoses of Europe’s condition. Yet the two models of teleology and the normative imperatives which characterize their respective methods could not be more distinct. This paper examines the two models and (...)
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  11. The Revolt Against Reason: Oswald Spengler and Violence as Cultural Preservative.Gregory Swer - 2019 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 4 (1):123-148.
    In The Decline of the West, Spengler argues that cultures have lifecycles. Although he warns that the end of Faustian (western) culture is nigh, Spengler suggests that the death of the culture might be forestalled if a rapprochement can be brought about between the technologized powers of Reason and the remains of cultural life. This portrayal of Reason as a salvific force seems to contradict Spengler’s typical depiction of Reason as a violent anti-cultural force. This paper reconstructs (...)
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  12. Science Fiction: Science, Vaihinger and Spengler's Fictionalist Philosophy of Science.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2021 - In David Engels, Gerd Morgenthaler & Max Otte (eds.), Oswald Spengler in an Age of Globalisation. Berlin/Lüdinghausen: Manuscriptum. pp. 197-225.
    Oswald Spengler is best known as a philosopher of history. However, one can trace in volume one of his The Decline of the West a sustained consideration of philosophical issues pertaining to the nature and practice of science that I suggest can be considered to be a philosophy of science. Not only has Spengler’s philosophy of science been largely overlooked, so too has its peculiar fictionalist character. By elaborating on the fictionalist character of Spengler’s scientific views I (...)
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  13. On Laws of History, and Other Faustian Fictions: A Fictionalist Interpretation of Spengler's The Decline of the West.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2023 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 7 (1):116-139.
    Most interpretations of Oswald Spengler’s _The Decline of the West_ offer a relativist or positivist reading of his philosophy of history, with the latter being the most common. This paper argues that any positivist account of Spengler’s philosophy of history is untenable, and that only a relativist interpretation is plausible. It differs from standard arguments for the relativist interpretation by arguing that Spengler’s philosophy be understood as a form of fictionalism. However, rather than dismissing the positivistic elements (...)
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  14. The Decline of Western Science: Defending Spengler’s Account of the End of Science - Within Reason.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2019 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 50 (4):545-560.
    Haack classifies Spengler’s views on the end of science as what she terms annihilationist in that he forecasts the absolute termination of scientific activity as opposed to its completion or culmination. She also argues that in addition to his externalist argument that Western science, as cultural product, cannot survive the demise of Western Culture, Spengler also puts forward an internalist argument that science, regardless of the imminent demise of Western Culture, is in terminal decline as evidenced by its (...)
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  15. The Vienna Circle and its Critical Reception of Oswald Spengler.Robert Reimer - 2023 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 7 (1):14-43.
    The Vienna Circle was an influential group of philosophers in the early 20th century. Its members were dedicated to do philosophy and to conduct research in accordance with the guidelines of the scientific world-conception. For some of them, Oswald Spengler was a dangerous antagonist due to the success and influence of his metaphysical philosophy of history in Der Untergang des Abendlandes and other works. In this paper, I will explore systematically the Circle’s critical reception of Spengler regarding his (...)
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  16. (1 other version)From Decline of the West to Dawn of Day.H. A. E. Zwart - 2020 - Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts 18 (1):55-66.
    This paper subjects Dan Brown’s most recent novel Origin to a philosophical reading. Origin is regarded as a literary window into contemporary technoscience, inviting us to explore its transformative momentum and disruptive impact, focusing on the cultural significance of artificial intelligence and computer science: on the way in which established world-views are challenged by the incessant wave of scientific discoveries made possible by super-computation. While initially focusing on the tension between science and religion, the novel’s attention gradually shifts to the (...)
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  17.  65
    Cavell's Odd Couple: Schoenberg and Wittgenstein.Eran Guter - 2024 - In David LaRocca (ed.), Music with Stanley Cavell in mind. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 237-252.
    In his lecture “Philosophy and the Unheard,” Cavell invites us to observe a pervasive analogy between Schoenberg’s idea of the twelve-tone row and Wittgenstein’s idea of grammar, which is supposed to encapsulate an expansive, sweeping philosophical program—Cavell’s own. For Cavell, the analogy evinces not only the kind of reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigation, which is attuned to Wittgenstein’s seemingly paradoxical amalgamation of embrace and resistance in regarding to the conditions of modernity, but also a kind of philosophy of music, which (...)
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  18. Wittgenstein's Anti-scientistic Worldview.Jonathan Beale - 2014 - In Jonathan Beale & Ian James Kidd (eds.), Wittgenstein and Scientism. London: Routledge. pp. 59-80.
    This chapter outlines ways in which Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism is manifest in his later conception of philosophy and the negative attitude he held toward his times. The chapter tries to make clear how these two areas of Wittgenstein’s thought are connected and reflect an anti-scientistic worldview he held, one intimated in Philosophical Investigations §122. -/- It is argued that the later Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is marked out against two scientistic claims in particular. First, the view that the scientific method is (...)
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  19. The Good, the Bad, and the Vacuous: Wittgenstein on Modern and Future Musics.Eran Guter - 2015 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 73 (4):425-439.
    This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that (...)
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  20. Stumbling over The Decline of the West.Gregory Morgan Swer - 2022 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 6 (2):II-IV.
    The introduction to the first of a two-part special issue on Oswald Spengler. This section explores his international influence both in his own time and in the present day.
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  21. The Vienna Circle’s responses to Lebensphilosophie.Andreas Vrahimis - 2021 - Logique Et Analyse 253:43-66.
    The history of early analytic philosophy, and especially the work of the logical empiricists, has often been seen as involving antagonisms with rival schools. Though recent scholarship has interrogated the Vienna Circle’s relations with e.g. phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism, important works by some of its leading members are involved in responding to the rising tide of Lebensphilosophie. This paper will explore Carnap’s configuration of the relation between Lebensphilosophie and the overcoming of metaphysics, Schlick’s responses to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, and Neurath’s reaction (...)
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  22. Wittgenstein, Modern Music, and the Myth of Progress.Eran Guter - 2017 - In Niiniluoto Ilkka & Wallgren Thomas (eds.), On the Human Condition – Essays in Honour of Georg Henrik von Wright’s Centennial Anniversary, Acta Philosophica Fennica vol. 93. Societas Philosophica Fennica. pp. 181-199.
    Georg Henrik von Wright was not only the first interpreter of Wittgenstein, who argued that Spengler’s work had reinforced and helped Wittgenstein to articulate his view of life, but also the first to consider seriously that Wittgenstein’s attitude to his times makes him unique among the great philosophers, that the philosophical problems which Wittgenstein was struggling, indeed his view of the nature of philosophy, were somehow connected with features of our culture or civilization. -/- In this paper I draw (...)
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  23. Relativism and Radical Conservatism.Timo Pankakoski & Jussi M. Backman - 2019 - In Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism. Routledge. pp. 219-227.
    The chapter tackles the complex, tension-ridden, and often paradoxical relationship between relativism and conservatism. We focus particularly on radical conservatism, an early twentieth-century German movement that arguably constitutes the climax of conservatism’s problematic relationship with relativism. We trace the shared genealogy of conservatism and historicism in nineteenth-century Counter-Enlightenment thought and interpret radical conservatism’s ambivalent relation to relativism as reflecting this heritage. Emphasizing national particularity, historical uniqueness, and global political plurality, Carl Schmitt and Hans Freyer moved in the tradition of historicism, (...)
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  24. Styles of thinking.Hub Zwart - 2021 - Berlin/Münster/Zürich: LIT Verlag.
    The way we experience, investigate and interact with reality changes drastically in the course of history. Do such changes occur gradually, or can we pinpoint radical turns, besides periods of relative stability? Building on Oswald Spengler, we zoom in on three styles in particular, namely Apollonian, Magian and Faustian thinking, guided by grounding ideas which can be summarised as follows: “Act in accordance with nature”, “Prepare yourself for the imminent dawn and “Existence equals will to power”. Finally, we reach (...)
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  25. Wittgenstein reimagines musical depth.Eran Guter - 2016 - In Stefan Majetschak Anja Weiberg (ed.), Aesthetics Today: Contemporary Approaches to the Aesthetics of Nature and of Art, Contributions to the 39th International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg am Wechsel: ALWS, 2016). pp. 87-89.
    I explore and outline Wittgenstein's original response to the Romantic discourse concerning musical depth, from his middle-period on. Schopenhauer and Spengler served as immediate sources for Wittgenstein's reliance on Romantic metaphors of depth concerning music. The onset for his philosophic intervention in the discourse was his critique of Schenker's view of music and his general shift toward the 'anthropological view', which occurred at the same time. In his post-PI period Wittgenstein was able to reimagine musical depth in terms of (...)
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  26. Naturalistic and Humanistic Fundation of Philosophy of Culture: Trans.: K. Chrobak.Ernst Cassirer - 2011 - Archiwum Historii Filozofii I Myśli Społecznej 56.
    In this essay Ernst Cassirer addresses two currents of the philosophical reflection about man and culture that emerged at the end of the 18th century. Th e naturalistic one, conceives of man and culture as an outcome of the processes that takes place beyond the reach of human will and consciousness. Among such naturalistically oriented philosophies Cassirer includes Hegel’s idealism, Taine’s positivism and Spengler’s psychologism. All of them imply a characteristic kind of historical fatalism. In opposition to such a (...)
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  27. Castoriadis against Heidegger: Time and existence.Alexandros Schismenos - 2024 - Montreal: Black Rose Books.
    The political actions of Martin Heidegger raise a compelling question to those concerned with philosophy: How was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century willing to ally himself with Nazism and what does this mean for philosophy? This question has been raised and brushed aside from the end of the Second World War, when Heidegger was formally accused for his involvement with Hitler's regime and forbidden to attain any official teaching position henceforth. Important thinkers, like his colleague (...)
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  28. ‘Grasping the Difficulty in its Depth’: Wittgenstein and Globally Engaged Philosophy.Thomas D. Carroll - 2019 - Sophia 60 (1):1-18.
    In recent years, philosophers have used expressions of Wittgenstein’s (e.g. “language-games,” “form of life,” and “family resemblance”) in attempts to conceive of the discipline of philosophy in a broad, open, and perhaps global way. These Wittgenstein-inspired approaches indicate an awareness of the importance of cultural and historical diversity for approaching philosophical questions. While some philosophers have taken inspiration from Wittgenstein in embracing contextualism in philosophical hermeneutics, Wittgenstein himself was more instrumental than contextual in his treatment of other philosophers; his focus (...)
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  29. Beyond Civilization and History.Shahzada Rahim Abbas - 2020 - New York: Amazon.
    The title of the book was chosen due to inspiration from Nietzsche’s famous book ‘Beyond good and Evil’, which has marked an unprecedented turning point in the history of philosophy. Hence, the book titled ‘Beyond Civilization and History’ is intended to outline the politico-historical debate, since the dawn of the 20th century. The discussion in the book will cover pre-modern, modern and post-modern discourse of the history of civilizations. The debate mainly focuses on the modernist and post-modernist historical context especially (...)
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  30. “A small, shabby crystal, yet a crystal”: A life of music in Wittgenstein’s Denkbewegungen.Eran Guter - 2019 - In B. Sieradzka-Baziur, I. Somavilla & C. Hamphries (eds.), Wittgenstein's Denkbewegungen. Diaries 1930-1932/1936-1937: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. StudienVerlag. pp. 83-112.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and writings attest the extraordinary importance that the art of music had for him. It would be fair to say even that among the great philosophers of the twentieth century he was one of the most musically sensitive. Wittgenstein’s Denkbewegungen contains some of his most unique remarks on music, which bear witness not only to the level of his engagement in thinking about music, but also to the intimate connection in his mind between musical acculturation, the perils (...)
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  31. From Periodic Decline to Permanent Rebirth: Alexander Raven Thomson on Civilization, Pathology, and Violence.Rory Lawrence Phillips - 2022 - Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence 6 (2):37-52.
    Alexander Raven Thomson was a British fascist philosopher, active from 1932 to 1955. I outline Thomson’s Spenglerian views on civilization and decline. I argue that Thomson in his first book is an orthodox Spenglerian who accepts that decline is inevitable and thinks that it is morally required to destroy civilization in its final stages. I argue that this suffers from conceptual issues which may have caused Thomson’s change to a revised form of Spenglerianism, which is more authentically fascist. This authentically (...)
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  32. Wittgenstein on Mahler.Eran Guter - 2013 - In Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Volker A. Munz & Annalisa Coliva (eds.), Mind, Language and Action: Contributions to the 36th International Wittgenstein Symposium. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society.
    In this paper I explain Wittgenstein’s ambivalent remarks on the music of Gustav Mahler in their proper musico-philosophical context. I argue that these remarks are connected to Wittgenstein’s hybrid conception of musical decline and to his tripartite scheme of modern music. I also argue that Mahler’s conundrum was indicative of Wittgenstein’s grappling with his own predicament as a philosopher, and that this gives concrete sense to Wittgenstein’s admission that music was so important to him that without it he was sure (...)
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  33. A surrogate for the soul: Wittgenstein and Schoenberg.Eran Guter - 2011 - In Enzo De Pellegrin (ed.), Interactive Wittgenstein. Springer. pp. 109--152.
    This article challenges a widespread assumption, arguing that Wittgenstein and the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg had little in common beyond their shared cultural heritage, overlapping social circles in fin-de-ciecle Vienna. The article explores Wittgenstein's aesthetic inclinations and the intellectual and philosophical influences that may have reinforced them. The article culminates in an attempt to form a Wittgensteinian response to Schoenberg's dodecaphonic language and to answer the question as to why Wittgenstein and Schoenberg arrived at very different ideas about contemporary music (...)
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